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The disk comes preloaded with a backup software. It is very easy to use and makes backup/archiving a breeze. If like me you prefer "clean disks", you can safely repartition/reformat the disk, all the tools can be downloaded directly from Western Digital's website.

A few items for those worried by security/privacy questions:- The disk comes with a password lock functionality: it does not encrypt the disk but prevents easy logical access to it (sort of parental / cheating spouse protection level). Someone who has physical access to the disk and tech knowledge will easily remove the lock and get access to all the files. It is a lock, not a disk encryption feature.- The disk controller performs compression. While very efficient, it will become a hassle to cipher 2 terabytes of "nothing" if you plan on encrypting the disk entirely with tools such as bitlocker or truecrypt (on my machine, a full disk encryption with truecrypt took 31 hours). Write operations are quite heavily impacted once the disk is fully encrypted but still fast enough for backup/archiving use.

Overall, the disk fully delivers according to the description/specification. Not very fast, not slow, serves its purpose of an archiving/backup disk. I recommend it.…more